ase is learning possible; on the first alternative
because we know already; on the second, because we do not know what to
look for, nor if, by chance, we find it can we tell that it is what
we were after. The dilemma makes no provision for coming to know, for
learning; it assumes either complete knowledge or complete ignorance.
Nevertheless the twilight zone of inquiry, of thinking, exists. The
possibility of hypothetical conclusions, of tentative results, is
the fact which the Greek dilemma overlooked. The perplexities of the
situation suggest certain ways out. We try these ways, and either push
our way out, in which case we know we have found what we were looking
for, or the situation gets darker and more confused--in which case, we
know we are still ignorant. Tentative means trying out, feeling one's
way along provisionally. Taken by itself, the Greek argument is a nice
piece of formal logic. But it is also true that as long as men kept a
sharp disjunction between knowledge and ignorance, science made only
slow and accidental advance. Systematic advance in invention and
discovery began when men recognized that they could utilize doubt for
purposes of inquiry by forming conjectures to guide action in tentative
explorations, whose development would confirm, refute, or modify the
guiding conjecture. While the Greeks made knowledge more than learning,
modern science makes conserved knowledge only a means to learning, to
discovery. To recur to our illustration. A commanding general cannot
base his actions upon either absolute certainty or absolute ignorance.
He has a certain amount of information at hand which is, we will assume,
reasonably trustworthy. He then infers certain prospective movements,
thus assigning meaning to the bare facts of the given situation. His
inference is more or less dubious and hypothetical. But he acts upon it.
He develops a plan of procedure, a method of dealing with the situation.
The consequences which directly follow from his acting this way rather
than that test and reveal the worth of his reflections. What he already
knows functions and has value in what he learns. But will this account
apply in the case of the one in a neutral country who is thoughtfully
following as best he can the progress of events? In form, yes, though
not of course in content. It is self-evident that his guesses about
the future indicated by present facts, guesses by which he attempts to
supply meaning to a multitude o